British city promises to ban jargon
What a rarity!
"Their meaning has become one of the most perplexing riddles of modern life, but soon "stakeholder engagements" and "multi-agency approaches" could be a thing of the past, in part of the country at least.
A council has banned seven of the most bewildering jargon phrases when speaking to members of the public. Civil enforcement officers, school crossing patrollers and civic amenity sites will become traffic wardens, lollipop ladies and rubbish tips, under new guidelines from Harrow Council. The list of banned phrases was drawn up after Harrow councillors asked a panel of local people about their experiences of dealing with council staff.
Councillor Paul Osborn said: "Our residents want to hear plain speaking and that is what we'll deliver. Every organisation uses jargon to some degree, but councils have been among the worst offenders." The council has also promised to answer phone calls within 30 seconds, acknowledge e-mails within 24 hours and make sure visitors are seen within 15 minutes.
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5 comments:
Don't know about Australia, but here in NYC they call Garbage Men by the title "Sanitation Engineers"! Also, since the 80s, most big companies to have dozens of "vice presidents", which used to indicate the second in command, and of course meant the one that would replace the CEO if he died or retired.
Is this an attempt by the Brits to rid themselves of PC-speak?
no, it's an attempt to let the voting public think they have a say in matters.
As to the explosion of job titles: The company I worked with until late last year called everyone who had any people under him a vice president, or even could potentially have people under him.
Some people were one man project teams, they were vice president of operations for that project.
Over a decade ago I already noticed that the ladies cleaning toilets were suddenly called "internal hygiene officers", so the inflation in job titles is pretty universal.
Well, this is one problem we can actually trace to it's origin. This started back in the 60's with a guy named Ed Norton, (played by Art Carney) a sewer worker in NYC. Trying to add some dignity to his job, he described himself as a "subterranean engineer". His good buddy Ralph Kramden, (Jackie Gleason) a NYC bus driver, loved it. Now you know the rest of the story.
Is anyone fooled or impressed by inflated and incomprehensible job titles? So why do ppl do it, as it immediately suggests the job must be very menial or banal.
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